Christine Stoddard

I recently spent some time in Freddie Gray's West Baltimore neighborhood asking local women for their thoughts on police reform. I was curious because, as the Freddie Gray trials drag on, I can't help but feel that city and state officials are failing to ask everyday people what needs to change.

In the weeks since Election Day, I’ve come to realize that while I’m entitled to my feelings, resenting the Latinx folks who voted for Trump is not a productive use of my time.

When you’re married to the only white man in your apartment building—and one of the very few in the neighborhood—you, as a woman, make a habit of observing him, especially if you’re a woman of color or a mixed race woman. “Will he use his social privilege for good or evil?” is the simple question, but evaluating him in those terms is not so simple.

Though I was raised in an interdenominational household, my upbringing could at best be described as vaguely Christian.

Black—the whispered word in educated, politically correct, upper middle class society.

For years, my white father called my mother’s beauty an “exotic” beauty. When I started to come into my own, he began calling me “exotic,” too. It wasn’t until high school that I began to understand why this word bothered me. Though my father meant it as a compliment, the word “othered” my mother, younger sisters, and me.

Drag queens, like Lady Bunny, teach outsiders to embrace ourselves and to embrace others. That means doing more than demonstrating tolerance.

Fielding off-putting questions and comments is a regular part of the mixed-race experience around the world. Yet this social phenomenon is especially common in places with a legacy of institutionalized and cultural racism. That includes the South.

[CN: mention of intimate partner violence] Patsy Cline sang with such a beautiful range of emotion because she had experienced so many ups and downs in her own life.

Indigenous people throughout the world already face so many challenges; they don’t need non-Indigenous people appropriating their cultures and championing family lore as fact. The genocide of Indigenous people is an ongoing travesty throughout the world